Primary freeze: any APIs that are heavily used should be frozen here. New feature development that does not affect existing APIs may continue. Also, packaging for release can continue (e.g. stack/package organization, rosdeps, etc...).

Final freeze: all APIs and packaging frozen. Releases with features should have occurred before this date so that integration is tested. While some breaks/bugs are expected, features that have failed to land/integrate at this time will be removed ("failed to integrate" == "causes unexpected downstream breakage").

Process

Phase I (SIG proposal/signup)

The process is very simple:

Propose an SIG: anyone can propose an SIG. Please only propose an SIG if you are willing to contribute.

Signup for an SIG: anyone can signup for an SIG. Please only signup for an SIG if you are willing to contribute (e.g. code).

The signup period will last until May 20th.

If you are proposing a SIG, we urge you to recruit authors/maintainers of the relevant software -- the authority of what goes in/out of a library remains with the maintainer/author, so their buy-in is crucial. Similarly, we encourage authors/maintainers to signup for SIGs that are relevant to their software.

Phase II (SIG meetings)

After the signup period, any SIG that has at least two people signed up for it will be considered valid.

The follow-up process is also very simple:

Each SIG designates a SIG Coordinator. If an SIG cannot agree on a coordinator, one will be chosen for you.

The coordinator will organize planning meeting(s) for the SIG. This can be over IRC, video chat, at IROS, or whatever medium bests fits the composition of your SIG. The deadline for these meetings is September 28th.

Each SIG group will post their planning notes as a sub-page of http://ros.org/wiki/groovy/Planning/<SIG-NAME>. The deadline for posting these notes is May 27th. SIGs can have followup meetings, but this initial deadline is to ensure that the SIG is activated.